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Gameplay and Mechanics
This Page is WIP, if you can add to it feel free. Combat In Endless Sky, ships have both a shield value and a hull value. A ship will become disabled if its hull reaches 25%-10%, depending on the size of the ship. You can purchase shield and hull regenerators which will repair those when you take damage. Regenerators will take energy and produce heat to function. There is no way to increase the amount of shields or hull a ship has. You can purchase weapons which will do damage against other ships. Firing weapons uses energy and produces heat. Different weapons have different values for how much shield or hull damage they will deal. Some weapons also have special damage types. The types of special damage are ion, heat, shield piercing, fuel, shield disruption, and area of effect. Many of these can only be found with certain aliens. Ion damage will damage the ships electrical systems. It will decrease the energy generation of the targeted ship and can be a good way to disable ships. Heat damage will be dealt by plasma weapons. It will raise the heat of the targeted ship. Fuel damage is an attribute which is not used by any weapons inthe game but can be used by modders. Fuel damage will increase or decrease the fuel of the targeted ship. Shield Piercing allows a percentage of the damage dealt to go straight through the shields and damage the hull. Shield Disruption will decrease the shield generation of the targeted ship. Weapons with blast radius will deal damage to all ships in range of the blast. There are three basic different types of weapons in Endless Sky, lasers, cannons, and secondary weapons (missiles). Boarding Once a ship has been disabled, you can board it by targeting it and pressing the board key, which is B by default. A ship that is disabled will be highlighted in grey when you target it. If you board a friendly ship that has been disabled, you will dock to their ship to help them repair it and get it back working. One could also take advantage of the fact a freighter has been disabled to take his chances and steal its cargo/outfits by targeting the ship in question and attacking it once to make it hostile against you, letting you board it as an attack rather than an offer to help. The player should note, however, that attacking a single ship, disabled or not, will result in the rest of its fleet, and most likely, the local militia, to attack you. If your ship gets disabled, you can get boarded too. If you get boarded by a hostile ship, it will plunder a part, or all, of your cargo. You can ask for help from a friendly ship by hailing it and pressing the "Ask for help" button. The ship will try to dock to your ship and repair it. The player should go to the nearest planet or station to repair, as the hull will still be damaged. ' '''Stealing cargo or outfits presents no risk, however, the second option may cause the player to die. When attempting to capture a ship, you will see that both the defender, the ship that you are boarding, and the attacker, the player, have Capture Attack and Defense "points", as well as defending/attacking probability and expected casualties. The attack points influence the chances of capturing a ship and can be increased by: * Buying Laser Rifles. Even though it's more useful in defending, it can be useful in attacking weak ships in the early game. For every crewman armed with it, it increases the attack by 0.6, defense by 0.8. * Buying Fragmentation Grenades. This is the second best option for attacking, pretty much useless in defending. Every crewmember armed with one of these will increase the attack by 1.3 and defense by 0.3. * Buying Nerve Gas. This is by far the best option for attacking as it increases attack by a whopping 2.8 for every crewmember armed with it. However, it's incredibly illegal and if you get scanned while carrying it, '''you will be fined for a million credits'. Note that, even if these 3 above count as outfit, they do not take up cargo or outfit space, and none of these, including the ones below, can get plundered from boarders. The defense points influence the chances of defending from the capture of a hostile ship and can be increased by: * Laser Rifles. As stated before, they increase defense by 0.8 and do not take up cargo or outfit space. * Security Stations. These take up 2 outfit space, however it provides 3.4 defense points. * Hiring more crew. They make little difference if unarmed, however. The brig does not affect defense or attack in any way whatsoever, and it only unlocks prisoner transport missions. 'Note that, in the current version of the game(0.9.10), pirate ships will NOT try to capture your ship when they board you first. ' The defense/attacking probability is affected by all the above for their respective uses. It shows an estimate of the probability of success in attacking/defending. The expected losses show the total expected crew casualties when boarding. Mining Numerous asteroids can be found careening about solar systems the player visits. Some of these are designated as minable, meaning that they can be shot at and destroyed, leaving behind chunks of debris that can be collected by flying over them. Minable asteroids are visually distinct from other rocks; for example, iron-rich asteroids tend to be reddish and slightly larger than unminable asteroids. Mined materials are listed in your ship's cargo (hotkey I to bring up your ship list, view individual ships to see their cargo. In port, all cargo can be seen in your flagship's info screen.) Minerals can be sold via the trade screen's sell all button, which will sell any and all commodities and 'harvested materials' in one click, leaving plundered outfits alone. Minerals can also be sold manually in the outfitter screen, where they will be listed under the 'Special' category, alongside local maps. The map tracks mineral deposits you have discovered and mined. They are treated as outfits: when selected the map shows where you've found them, similar to the way other outfits show where they are sold. Players can also retrieve cargo from destroyed ships in a similar manner to mining. Merchant ships will sometimes jettison cargo when threatened, which can be collected by any bystanders without impairing relations. Trading Endless Sky has a slightly dynamic economy where the player can also influence prices. If you have a large trading fleet running the same route over and over again, the trade prices will start to change and it will be less profitable for you to run that route. Respawn/saves Each pilot has a number of associated 'snapshots' that can be selected from the load screen. By default, the game autosaves every time you take off from a planet or station, ensuring that unlucky pirate raids (or accidental acts of piracy) are not excessively punishing. You may also create new (uniquely named) snapshots manually at any time, in case, for example, you aren't sure about what story branch you would like to select and want to be able to return to the decision point. You may re-load your save at any time, to your most recent save or a previous snapshot of your choice. The most recent 3 autosaves can be loaded by selecting snapshots "~previous-1" -2 and -3, in case you've landed after a mistake and wish to return to a slightly earlier state. Some story missions will also create additional snapshots, titled 'autosave,' before important missions, particularly long distance, time limited escort missions where it is possible to land on several planets en route and render the mission un-completable from existing autosaves. note: since the many of the game's fleet spawns rely on chance, resetting to to an earlier snapshot does not guarantee the same events to occur. Combat Rating A pilot's combat rating is based on credit value of starships that have been disabled by your ship or any ship in your fleet. The combat rating increases logarithmically, which means that for each level of increase, you must disable exponentially more ships than you have disabled in the entire game. Crew does not matter anymore as of 0.9.10; the relevant change can be seen here: https://github.com/endless-sky/endless-sky/commit/0c7d39d6ee51e10702a3eb5fd1992300d79371a7 Combat rating influences the kinds of missions you get, as well as the size of the fleets that are sent to oppose you. Category:Endless Sky wiki